author

Ralph Sloan

A little-known pulp-era science fiction writer, remembered today for short stories that appeared in magazines such as Planet Stories. The surviving record is thin, which gives the name a slightly mysterious place in early genre history.

1 Audiobook

Ordeal in Space

Ordeal in Space

by Ralph Sloan

About the author

Ralph Sloan appears to have been a science fiction writer active in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Reliable catalog sources connect the name with stories including Ordeal in Space, which appeared in Planet Stories in 1949.

The available public record is very limited, and I couldn't confirm much personal biographical information beyond the publication trail itself. That makes Sloan one of those authors known more through the magazines of the pulp era than through a well-documented life story.

For readers of vintage science fiction, that can be part of the appeal: Sloan's work comes out of the fast-moving magazine world that helped shape mid-century genre fiction, even if the author behind the byline remains hard to pin down today.